Translator Antoinette
Passages from the book RITRATTI DI SANTI by Antonio Sicari ed. Java Book
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
The Jubilee year 2000 is not only a passage of time between the second
and the third millennium, but it is the year of celebration of the 150th
anniversary of the birth of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini which took place in
Sant’Angelo in the province of Lodi and the 50th anniversary of her
proclamation as the Patron saint of emigrants (17th September, 1950)
by Pope Pious X11, by whom she had been canonised in 1946.
In a biography
of Mother Cabrini, known as “the Saint of the Italians in America”, these are
the precise words that are written: “In the America of the19th century,
mothers and grandmothers, who wanted to scare their lively and restless child,
instead of naming the ‘ghost’ they would cry: ‘Here comes an Italian!’ and the
child would immediately run and hide on their laps.
It might seem
just to be a colourful note, but these are among the saddest things that were
written on the tragic incidents of our emigrants, between the end of the last
century and the beginning of the 20th century.
It is the
period during which signs are exposed outside of bars in American cities to
notify that entrance was forbidden <<to niggers and Italians>>,
being that Italians were considered as <white niggers>>.
Between 1876
and 1914, shortly before the first world war, about fourteen million Italians,
according to our statistics; <eighteen million!> is the number maintained
by the countries that were invaded by the throngs of our poor co-nationals. The
entire population of Italy did not reach thirty million at the time!
In history
books we read of the great migrations of nations and of the times during which
entire nations were reduced to slavery, but we omit the fact that the history
of our emigrants was in fact the very same.
Italo Balbo
wrote that all those co-nationals – swallowed up in coal mines, in the digging
for railroads, in oil wells, in iron and steel industries, in the textile
industries, in shipyards, in cotton and tobacco plantations – were <non
one’s Italy>, an anonymous population of <white slaves>, <human
material traded in millions>.
It is
calculated that the number of Italians working in mines, at a certain point,
exceeded that of the total amount of emigrants put together. They arrived in
hundreds of thousands a year, harassed from the time the left up to their
arrival by sinister commission agents who took advantage of their ignorance and
need, deprived of protection, agreeable to anything they proposed; thus
literally becoming human material on which – necessary debris of no value – the
American economical potency was built.
They lived in
incredible conditions of decay, crowded in human beehives (up to eight hundred
people packed into small building of five floors), in beastly physical and
often moral conditions. With their style of life they seemed to give credit to
the idea of an Italian as a half-savage, violent and always ready to come to
hands.
They lived
without schools, hospitals, churches, closed in their ‘little Italy’s’,
districts, which proliferated in the suburbs of big cities. They were almost
never even ‘little Italys’’ because the various localisms were the cause of
their separating and putting the various regional groups one against the other.
The children lived on the streets. A future as shoe-shiners or newspaper
sellers awaited them.
The
impossibility of communication (almost all of them were illiterate and they
expressed themselves in dialect) making all tentative of solidarity vain.
Those who
succeeded in making a fortune (and many started vegetable shops or organising Mafia
clans) were careful not to mix with their own despicable co-nationals, trying
rather to forget their communal origin.
One day in
1879 a deputy dared to read a letter from a Venetian colonist before the
Italian Parliament: <We are here like
animals. We live and die without priests, teachers, doctors>. The
Italian politics however, took no heed. The looked at the problem of emigration
from a point of view of public order, with some provision of police, but with
non intelligent perception of any form of economic or social tutelage.
Some years
later – when Sister Cabrini herself will have done, for the love of Christ,
that which the entire government had never succeeded in doing – the
politicians, looking back on their legislative pseudo-precautions will say: <We went wrong in everything>.
Not even the Catholic Church in America could do anything. In the whole city of New York there were only twenty priests who understood a little Italian. To make things worse, our emigrants found the costumes, strange for them, that compelled attending the Church also an obligation, before entering the church, of contributing economically to the up-keep of the parish activities. They were already poor and a similar costume seemed unjust to them (they called those aims ‘the customs duty’). Not to say that the sole Italian organisations present were the <Giordano Bruno> circles, whose only worries were to spread and maintain a fervid anti-clericalism.
So they
stopped attending the Church and many of those last shreds of spiritual and
moral dignity, were lost.
|
|
In Italy the
problem was perceived by Pope Leo X111 (who presented and faced the problem in
the famous encyclical Rerum novarum) and
by the Bishop of Piacenza,
Scabrini who
had founded a congregation to look after the emigrants.
Frances
Cabrini was a Lodigian who had desired to be a missionary since she was a young
child, when her father read to the children, during the long evenings, the Annuals of the Propagation of the Faith, she
would sit day dreaming. She dreamt in those days of mysterious China. She went
as far as to stop eating cakes when she was convinced that in China they did
not have cakes, so she had to prepare herself.
She had become, after many hardships, the founder of a small religious congregation aimed at missionary life, a strange project for a female institute, and she felt ready to make her old girlhood dream come true.
She met Bishop
Scalbrini who tried to make her change her mind describing the miserable
conditions of the emigrants in America.
Frances was
confused and so she decided to leave the decision to Pope Leo XIII, who
listened to her lengthily, then decisively told her: <Not in the Far East, Cabrini, but to the West”> . It was as
though the same word of God was indicating His will to her.
She was
thirty-nine years old, she had lung problems and the doctors had given the
prognoses that she had not longer than two years of life to live.
She left with
seven companions; the ship on which she made her first trip, carried 900
emigrants in 3rd class.
She arrived in
New York at the end of March, 1889, she had been informed that the Arch Bishop
Corrigan and an American noblewoman, the wife of an Italian Earl who had become
the director of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art; would be there to meet her, but the two had had quarrelled over of
points of view and disagreements of programming, and they had written to Italy
advising that the departure be suspended.
The result
being that there was nobody to meet the nuns. It was pouring rain when they
went ashore, as God granted, they arrived at the poor house of the Scalabrini
fathers, soaking wet and tired, but they had no means of giving them
hospitality. They ended up in a lurid lodging near the Chinese quarters, where
the beds were so dirty that they hadn’t even the courage to lie on them: they
sat on the floor shivering from the cold resting their shoulders against the
wall.
The archbishop
received them, the day after, and briskly advised them to return to where they
had come from. <Never, your
Excellency, I am here under order from the Holy See, and her I must remain>
- she answered.
In the end,
and with the help of the countess, she succeeded in opening a small school for a
few orphans, that she called “The House of the Holy Angels”.
Whereas, the
countess, in obedience to the archbishop, organised a big school for the
Italian children. It was a sui generis. The
children arrived in enormous numbers; there was no other place to put them up
but in the poor Scalabriniani Church, and there, between one service and
another, in spaces made in the choir, in the sacristy, in corners of the church
curtained off, her the classes were established. The benches were used as desks, the kneeling benches as the
teacher’s desk.
The nuns, who
were teaching, often began with the washing and combing of hair of that crowd
of dirty and ruffled boys. In the afternoon they had catechism, followed by
playing the courtyard, a hidden and unhappy place sunk between high and dark
buildings.
In her free
time, and until late in the evening, Frances Canrini, would plod through the
muddy lanes of the Italian quarter, in search of those parents who otherwise
she would have never known.
In a paragraph
of the New York Sun, dated the 30th
June, 1889 we read: <During the last
few weeks, some women, dressed as Sisters of Charity, are going through the
Italian quarters of the Bend and Little Italy, climbing narrow and long
stairways, going down into dirty basements and in certain dens where not even
the New York police would dare to enter alone>.
Notwithstanding the countess’s help, the principal problem of money remained. Therefore, the nuns began to travel through the city looking for help, refusing, on principal, all discrimination.
In an
environment where division reigned (between the same Italians who were
separated into groups of families and localisms), where the Catholic Irish
considered the Italians as neo-pagans and where the<natives> met to
organise <the ethnical protection>, those nuns moved with dignity and the
graciousness of love.
They were accepted beyond their utmost hopes: shopkeepers of every race and religion came to the door of their shops to call them and pack them with merchandise; business-men decided to give them a cheque; the owners of markets gave orders that no one was to stop or ill-treat those courageous nuns; a Jewish German carpenter gifted them with furniture that was to furnish schools and orphanages; the Irish nationalists, demanded that the police stopped the traffic when the nuns were passing with their household effects, because “they represented the Pope”; passengers on trams stealthy put a few dollars in their hands.
Meanwhile, the
“House of the Holy Angels” had expanded and was attended by coloured, Chinese
and mulatto’s children.
On the 17th
of July, 1889, an organised procession of three hundred and fifty boys and
girls, paraded through the streets of Little
Italy; the girls wearing their veils and carrying their rosary beads, the
boys wearing their armbands of the association; in groups of thirty, carrying
their St. Louis, Saint Agnes and St. Anthony banners.
Who still
remembered certain processions that were once held in their parishes, when the
associations were flourishing, can have an idea of the tenderness of a similar
picture; but it is impossible for us to imagine the expressions of the Irish
and the protestants at the sight of these boys and girls who paraded in silence
and dignity, those same children that they used to consider lurid and
disorderly thieves.
The first
battle had been won, but they were only at the start.
Frances
returned to Italy in the same month, to take care of the novices of her
Congregation. While in Rome, she heard the news that the Jesuits in America
were selling a huge estate in West Park,
on the banks of the river Hudson, 150 miles from New York.
She returned
to America with seven other nuns and succeeded in putting together the five
hundred thousand dollars that were necessary for the deposit. God would think
about the remaining ten thousand. And so she founded the house for the
formation of the Institute, a college, and even a hospice for girls afflicted
by typhus, the decease that was massacring the poor people.
The question comes
naturally: “But where does she get the
money?”. There are thousands of answers, but one in particular is told that
if a benefactor had decided to sign a yearly donation cheque of three hundred
dollars, Frances was able to stop his hand at the last zero, with a smile, and
then – as she was used to with her pupils – she would guide the hand to trace
another zero. Wasn’t this the way to teach charity as you would to read and
write?
There is an
episode that is right to anticipate, because it gives the idea of the aptness
of her style and her faith.
In New
Orleans, in 1892, Frances meets an very rich adventurous Sicilian, who had made
his fortune in ships, beer factories, insurance companies, building societies,
and who was also the owner of about sixteen hundred thousand hectors of cotton
and lemon cultivation’s.
We summarise
the following from a report of the times, taken from a biography by G.
Dell’Ongaro:
“Your visit is an honour for me, Mother Cabrini, all of America are speaking about you. How can I help you?”.
“In nothing. I would like to be of help to you”.
“I need nothing. I asked for nothing from no one, I desire
only to be left in peace and carry on with my business…”.
“I know nothing about business or affairs. But your
happiness interests me. I have been told that you have been married for a long
time. But you have no children. It is sad”.
“Unfortunately it is true, I like children, but…”.
“That’s a pity. A real pity. With all these beautiful things
you have, and not even a son to leave them to. Have you ever asked yourself,
the reason for such a fortune? There must be a reason. I am certain that God
has planned a beautiful project for your life. You do not know the joy that
children can be”.
At this point the man revealed to have thought at times, of adoption, but had always renounced from fear of his wife’s reaction, and ends by saying.
“Let me think about it, let me speak to my wife, and if Maria agrees, then I will call you and you can bring us the child”.
“The child? Who spoke of only one child? Why only one?”.
“How many do you want to give me, Mother?”.
“What do you think about sixty-five, to begin with?
This
businessman will end up financing an entire orphanage. When, some years later,
this building becomes too small, he donated another sixty five thousand
dollars, an enormous amount of money in those days.
Having founded
the West Park house, Frances Cabrini
returns once again to Italy, where she continued to direct her missionary
congregation, which was growing rapidly. She remained to Italy for a few months
and then returned to America with twenty-eight nuns, determined to accept a new
institution in Nicaragua. So she opened a college in Granada that, only four
years later will be demolished during one of the many Central American revolutions.
From here she
moved to south of the United States where she will have an even worse impact. A
large number of Italians mainly from Sicily, emigrated to Virginia, Carolina
and Louisiana, where they found people who were inclined to racial hatred.
Slavery had been officially abolished only thirty years before and the
Americans were not certainly pleasant to those <black-men with pale
skin>, which was their definition of our emigrants.
The Sicilians
however, were not submissive like the negros’. The Matranga brother’s and the
Provenzano brother’s Mafia domineered and the rivalry was on both sides for the
ruling of the <principal port district>.
In 1890 the
head of the police department of New Orleans was caught in an ambush and nineteen
Italians’ were incriminated. There was no sufficient proof, but some
journalists, who were at the hospital, heard the policeman murmur, just before
he died, <the dagos shot me>
(this was a contemptuous terminology used for <meridian’s>).
The trial kept
the nation on edge, the Mafia bosses, who had the best lawyer’s, were all
acquitted in March of 1891.
However, if
they had enough power to defend there picciotti
from justice, their bosses did not have enough to defend them from the
hatred of the people. Before they were freed, an angry throng of about ten
thousand people, led by the vice-mayor, attacked the prison and lynched the
prisoners: two were hung, two were killed by iron bars, others beaten by guns.
The bodies were hung from trees, and street-lamps.
Almost fifty
per-cent of the Union newspapers approved the massacre and the tension rose to
a point that Italy re-called it’s Ambassador from Washington. Other lynching
followed these in two other cities in Louisiana.
In the city of
New Orleans, torn apart by these implacable hatreds, Mother Cabrini arrived on
Holy Tuesday in 1892. She immediately perceived that she would have to begin
from the new generations, give a new semblance and another hope to those swarms
of youth that waited to increase the masses of the criminal underworld, and
compel the city to acknowledge the dignity of those humiliated and apprehensive
people.
She needed at
least an orphanage, a school and a boarding school, and at least fifty thousand
dollars to begin with.
Paradoxically,
in New Orleans a lot of Italians had made fortunes, they had become directors
of huge industries and owners of companies; but they did not like making
themselves known as Italians. They tried, in fact in every possible way to
forget their origins.
Frances went
looking for them, one by one: the Rocchi, shipbuilders from Milan, the Marinoni
from Brescia, bankers and owners of cotton plantations, Astrada, from Naples, a
famous proprietor of renowned restaurants, the illustrious clinic Formenti, Mrs.
Bacigalupo, a alimentary wholesaler, the Bevilacqua and Monteleone, owners of
luxurious shoe shops, and the millionaire Pizzati, Sicilian, of whom we have
already spoken.
These are only
some names that we wanted to mention, among many others, because they still
resound in our land; almost all of them understood and appreciated Cabrini’s
intent; it was to demonstrate to that city, (that loved and appreciated it’s
music, it’s artists, but hated the Italian people, considered either members of
the Mafia or potential delinquents), that the real problem was the social
indifference in which those youth were left, without any care or protection.
Saint Phillip Street’s orphanage became a social centre, for the children who were
boarded there and the hundreds of others who used it as an oratory, and also
for dozens of other children of every race and colour.
The chapel in
the Institute became the Italians Church and, in this case also, a proud and
orderly procession was held in honour of the Sacred Heart – in the old style,
that the population of New Orleans loved so much – to sanction a newly found
dignity; a procession with lots of religious singing, and even the “Va pensiero” that stirred even the white <masters>, even though jazz was the dominion in the city.
For the first
time the circles, the societies, the federations and the other small groups in
which the Italians were divided and lacerated, paraded together.
In 1905 an
epidemic of yellow fever hit the city. The emigrants of every race and colour,
in their ignorance, refused medicine, they infringed all measures of hygiene
and prevention, they refused to leave infected houses and buildings. France’s
nuns took on the task – going from house to house, risking their lives, and in
some cases really sacrificing it – in order to convince them of what they had
at their disposal for their well being.
Everyone
trusted the nuns, and – when the epidemic was over – not only the city of New
Orleans, but also the United States government and that of Rome publicly thank
them.
Let us return
to New York.
A part of the
life, in which the tragedy of the emigrants could have been touched by hand,
was the sanitary problem.
As they were
considered as human material, no one worried much about those who became ill because
of the inhuman conditions of life in which they lived, nor about the victims of
what was called <the industrial massacre> (hundreds and hundreds of
injured in their places of work), nor of the fact that hospitals where
emigrants could be admitted to did not exist.
There were
hospitals of course, where you paid, but even having the economical means, no
one wanted to go to them. What was the use for the sick that were not able to
make themselves understood when they tried to explain the symptoms of their
illness in that slang they mixed with their original dialect and the slang of
the American slums?
The patients
on having been admitted seemed to have entered a prison or an obituary, before
their time had come, everything was so cold and aseptic!, and they even lost
hope without a word of comfort from a nun or a priest.
They preferred
to die in their hovels, without care or cleanness, but having at least a little
tenderness.
Of course, the
Italians, if they had gathered together, they could have had their hospital;
the American government was ready to help them and the Italian government also.
They were not
at a loss for projects, and the argument was one of the furthermost in all
their dreams and discussions, but every tentative had miserably failed: a
hospital would have been needed for the Sicilians, one for the Neapolitans, one
for the Calabrese, on for the Lombards and so forth. Each and all were
concerned about their co-regionals, when they did not go as far as to stop at
their town fellowmen.
To tell the
truth, they had succeeded in opening a hospital <The Giuseppe Garibalidi
Hospital> - in the hope that the hero of the two worlds would bring them to
some agreement – but the general Commissioner for emigration had to admit, with
embarrassment, that inside that hospital <the Italian doctors argued twelve
months a year> and the money that had been collected to run the hospital
disappeared unexplainingly.
Frances felt,
with a certain discomfort, that all were looking and hoping in her, but she did
not feel able to take on that task.
Furthermore,
she had enough to think about, between schools and orphanages.
Then two
things happened that her conscience perceived as two voices – one from the
world and one from Heaven – both of them were asking her to obey God’s will.
The worldly
voce came to her by the news of two nuns that had gone to visit the city
hospital and one of them had heard a boy calling her, this boy had been in
hospital for some months, he stated to cry when he heard her speaking his
native language. He had a letter and had kept it under his pillow for three
months, he was illiterate and no one had been able to read it for him. The nuns
themselves had difficulty in reading the letter because it was written in very
poor Italian, however it brought the news that his mother had died suddenly.
For three long
months he had laid his head on this news without being able to give it a voice.
Frances cried
heart-brokenly. That night she dreamt – and it was the voce from heaven – of a
hospital ward in which she saw a fair and beautiful lady was walking among the
beds, with incredible tenderness, she caressed the ill and pulled up their
blankets. She immediately understood, in the dream (or vision, perhaps!), that
it was the Blessed Virgin and she rushed to help her. It was not her duty, the
Queen of Heaven, to serve the sick! But Our Lady – she was still dreaming –
looked at her somewhat sadly and said to her: “I am doing what you do not want to do!”.
The next morning
Frances had already decided to destine ten of her nuns to this task.
At first she
tried to take over a home that the Scalabrinians owned, but it was going
through a rough rime.
When she
realised that the running of the home would be very costly, she did a trick.
She rented two houses, bought some beds and put the nuns to work making
mattresses, and then, secretly transferred the patients (all of them with their
cutlery hidden under the blankets) and some bottles of medicine to the new
centre. The nuns would sleep on mattresses on the floor, using their coats as
blankets.
This is the
way – in 1892, the centenarian of the discovery of America) - the Columbus
Hospital started, with two
American doctors working gratis, amazed as they were by the courage of that
woman. The up keeping of the hospital was always guaranteed my thousands of
ways of charity that Frances knew how to find and keep coming in without
interruption, up until the financial state aids began to arrive.
In just a few
years the Cabrinians were known every where as <the Colombo’s Sisters>.
In 1896 six hundred and fifteen was the number of patients being treated
gratis; in the first thirty years of the life of the hospital one hundred and
fifty million patients were taken care of.
<But this is Italy!> exclaimed the
Italian Commissioner of government for Emigration, remaining speechless, on
seeing the meridian atmosphere that reigned in that hospital: he then waited to
be presented to Mother Cabrini, with the priggishness of an important person,
who had come to <take account of the situation and refer it to those of
authority>.
He was deeply
impressed by her penetrating, investigating eyes and of a species of
indomitable energy that emanated from that apparently fragile figure. He was even
more so, when he heard her say with a frankness that did not leave space for an
answer : <You all discus too much! It
is not necessary to discuss a lot on the necessities to protect the emigrants:
this is to be done! I do not discuss; I find that good must be done? I get
straight down to the task with my little Institute and I never despair in
finding the means, because I trust that in one way or another I will always
find them>.
Some years
later, that same Commissioner, who had become her friend and an enthusiastic
admirer, will say to her: <Mother
Cabrini, you do more for the emigrants than the entire Ministry for Foreign
affairs put together>.
In 1903 she build another hospital in Chicago, adapting a luxurious hotel bought for the sum of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, when she had only ten thousand to lodge as a deposit, money that had been collected among the inter Italian of the city.
She left the
refurbishing to some of her nuns who were unfortunately cheated by dishonest building
contractors, who involved them in useless and badly done works, which caused
frightful debts.
|
|
Frances
returned ten months later, when all seemed lost. But she did not lose heart, she
sacked the contractors, architects and builders, and began again employing,
under her own personal command, new hosts of builders, carpenters, plumbers.
She came up against the
Mafia in
Illinois: she received threatening and warnings. In was during the winter when
they cut the water pipes, and so the ground floor turned into a thick sheet of
ice which took pickaxes to break, they burned the basements, they than
threatened to blow up the building using dynamite. When no one expected it,
because the works were not finished, she transferred the infirm to the
building.
Saying. <Let us see if they will blow up the
infirm”>. They left her alone. She had won once again and before leaving
was able to dictate regulation for the internal service of doctors and nurses.
She seemed
indestructible to a point that they had given her the affectionate nickname of:
<Sister perpetual motion>.
One day while
she was travelling on a train in Colorado, infested by bands of outlaws, the
train was attacked. A bullet penetrated France’s compartment and seemed to be
heading straight for her, but it swerved without hitting her: <They would not harm you even if they
shot you in the face>, a railway attendant said to her in admiration.
This was the real impression she gave every time she had to face difficulty or
danger.
We have to renounce telling many stories that strike our imagination just to mention them.
Here we have some principal names and dates.
In 1896: she founded
a college in Buenos Aires, where she arrived after having crossed the Andes
climbing to the height of four thousand meters on the back of a mule; 1898: she
opened three new schools in New York, a college in Paris and one in Madrid;
1900. Other congregations in Buenos Aires and a college in Rosario de Santa Fè;
a school in London and an Institute in Denver in Colorado; 1903: apart from the
Columbus Hospital in Chicago, she
started an orphanage in Seattle; 1905: she opened a orphanage in Los Angeles; 1907:
she founded a college in Rio de Janeiro, 1909: she opened another hospital in
Chicago, 1911: she opened a school in Philadelphia; 1914: an orphanage in Dobs Feny in New York; 1911: she opened
a sanatorium in Seattle. Not to mention the Italian foundations, the L’Istituto
Supeiore di Magistero in Rome, and a college in Genoa and Turin, all this
between one journey and another.
In all, in
figures: thirty seven years of activity with the foundation of sixty seven
institutes; travelling forty four thousand miles by sea (joking about her
country girls origins, Frances called the Atlantic: <The road of the
vegetable garden>, and sixteen thousand miles overland.
The figures
say nothing about the apostate of the Cabarin. It is enough to remember that
Frances conducted some of them to the mines in Denver, going down to nine
hundred feet in profundity, preparing them with accurate tenderness: <It
will not be difficult to speak to the miners about Heaven, saying that they are
already in hell>.
From then on
she destined some of her nuns to the service of those who <had no air or family>.
As she also
conducted other nuns to the Sing Sing prison, where a great number of Italians,
unable to defend themselves, like the ill who were not able to explain their
illnesses, they rotted in hatred and desperation.
The nuns were
occupied mainly in maintaining the connections – otherwise impossible – between
the prisoners and their families.
The prisoners
cried when they heard that Frances had desperately battled to obtain the
postponing of the execution of a boy, an only son, who’s wish was to see his
mother before he died and to ask her to forgive him for having abandoned her,
leaving her on her own.
Frances
Cabrini had helped her to come to America, paying her fare for the long
journey, accompanying that poor woman wrapped in her country woman’s black
shawl, with infinite tenderness.
We do not have
time to tell of the type of fibre that those intrepid nuns that Mother Frances
escorted with her, in groups that were ever growing in number, each time she
returned from Italy.
One episode is
quite sufficient to have an intuition: at the docks, while waiting to board the
ship for America, a nun was explaining piously to her relatives who had come to
say farewell: “I make this grave
sacrifice in going to America, willingly “. Frances, who was standing
beside her, suddenly interrupted her: “God
does not want to impose you with this grave sacrifice, my child, remain here”. And
another nun took her place.
Harshness? No:
realism. That same realism that never believed that anything was impossible,
was telling her that you could not undertake a task without devoting yourself
to it full of joy and without being completely detached from yourself, even
from your spiritual habits.
Therefore she
had a very precise pedagogical system: “When
I go to visit one of our homes and I see long faces, and note a certain aria of
depression, of listlessness and bad humour, I never ask anyone: ‘What is or
is not wrong with you?, I just start a
new activity that obliges the nuns to come out of themselves”.
God only knows what would happen, and how certain institutes would be renewed, if the respective superiors would find the courage to adapt similar pedagogical criteria!
One last thing we must say. Sometimes certain <laic> love to repeat with derision that <you cannot govern with Our Fathers>, and not even with the <social doctrine> of the Church.
Never the less, there are pages of history in which faith and prayer have demonstrated the capacity of such a concrete and multiform operate, of such a prompt social geniality (Sollicitudo rei socialis) and anticipator to make us certain that the lack of prayer – and furthermore the lack of a real faith – that leaves man in the most tragic egoism, in a moment when they want to govern their similars and invent recipes for social progress.
Above all an <intellectual> egoism, of a mind which inevitably is obliged to lose it’s time with one’s self and his own prejudices, and with his own small<condition>, for whatever extension he may imagine to give it. So, the necessary consequences, also an inevitable narrow mindness, in understanding the problems and in facing the needs, the narrow mindness of man void of the infinite breath of prayer and faith.
“The
world is too small, I want to embrace it entirely”, Mother Cabrini would say. And she did not fear – recalling certain
memories of school – to confess. “I will
never be in peace until the sun never sets on the Congregation”.
Non the less – with the same truthfulness
– she would say, as had many other Saints before her: “God is everything and I am nothing”.
|
|
The difference that came from her Holy Fathers, lay here: she desired to take her Congregation to the four corners of the world, so that the sun could never set on them, without ever thinking of herself or her projects, but only desiring to do her best in order that there would be no space whatsoever where that Christ she loved so much, would not shine on.
“Jesus
–a beautiful expression she used – it is a blessed necessity”
She believed everything was possible,
because she repeated with Saint Paul: “I
can do all in Him that gives me the power”.
To the Christians of that time and to
those of today she remembered: “Without
striving, you get no-where. What do businessmen not do in the world of affairs?
And why can’t we do almost the same for our beloved Jesus’ interests?”.
When, worn out by work and joy, in 1917, she died in Chicago, in the Hospital that she herself had founded, our emigrants said with affection and gratitude that the <Italian Columbus had discovered America, but only she, Frances, had discovered the Italians in America>.
Monument
to St. Frances Cabrini
Divo Barsotti wrote properly: <Frances Cabrini’s life seems like a legend. A history of the Church that ignores this fragile woman is in grievous fault; an Italian history that refuses to speak of it is sectarian>.